Lately, I have been having a hard time sleeping. I have always struggled with sleep; falling asleep and staying asleep are both difficult. Once it starts getting dark, I start getting anxious. I watch the windows and am too aware that it’s dark outside and dark = sleep (eventually). I look into the dark outside and see things that I don’t want to-faces, places, memories, images. And somehow, when it’s dark, these things seem brighter, more easily defined by my eyes and brain.
I try to keep busy. I feel tired after a day of pretending to be normal, trying to keep up the rhythm of a normal life, and taking care of everyone around me. Being tired, even exhausted, both physically and mentally aren’t the problem when it comes to sleep. I am tired, exhausted, spent (whatever term you’d like to use) by the end of the day and I desperately want to sleep. My brain is so very very tired. But each night, the same cycle repeats itself. It gets dark, it gets closer to bedtime, and I get anxious. It’s as though there’s a switch in my brain that goes from ON (because my brain is always running at full speed) to REALLY ON which is like my brain in hyperdrive.
All of the thoughts and emotions I’ve suppressed all day long to ‘function’ and ‘be normal’ bubble up and I can barely stand the idea that I’ll have to tolerate one more night of twisting and turning, sweaty and panicky while everyone else in my house sleeps. I envy them. I listen to my husband breathe, I sometimes go and watch my children sleep, almost choked up with jealousy of how easy it is for them to fall asleep and stay asleep.
After much internal fighting with myself, I do fall asleep. It’s usually after a few hours of wrestling with my thoughts and fears and I finally drift off. After that, I normally wake up after about an hour. I have nightmares that I’m being choked, I can’t breathe, I can’t move, someone is touching me, I’m trapped. I startle awake and every nerve in my body is screaming that I’m in danger, that I have to escape. I’ve soaked my sheets with sweat and my heart is racing so hard, I swear others would be able to hear it if they were awake. But they aren’t and I’m alone.
I get out of bed and pace, try to shake off that old echo from childhood that there is danger in every minute of the day. If I’m very lucky, I will be able to settle myself down with the hour. If I’m just lucky, it’s a few hours. If I’m unlucky, those feelings will turn into a flashback and there will be almost no sleep left for the night. If I am lucky enough to fall back to sleep, it begins again with another nightmare, more sensations of being in danger, more likely to have a flashback. Each time, I look at the clock and calculate how much sleep I can get if I go to sleep RIGHT NOW. But I never do and time marches forward until around 4 or 5 am when I can finally drift off feeling safe enough to sleep. I wake for good around 7 am groggy and my thoughts like mud. It takes most of the morning to shake off the night before.
I have read every article about how to improve sleep: no screen time, limit caffeine, change the appearance of your room, meditate before bed, tea, medications, mindfulness, tapping, and journaling just to name a few. I have a weighted blanket. I have my room at a warmer temperature because being cold is a trigger for me. I have my lavender right at my bedside so I can smell it all night long. I have done nightmare re-scripting, drawing of my nightmares to externalize it, creating a ‘hero’ image of myself that can act as a protector when I’m asleep. So far, no luck. I’ve gotten into the bad habit lately of going to bed later and later but honestly, why would any sane person want to go through this night after night? It’s torture and my own brain is the tormentor.
It’s not as if you can escape your own brain, your own thoughts, your own memories. And that is ultimately the kicker, the final karmic bitch slap to being a trauma survivor is that you can do everything that is asked of you. You can take your medications, go to therapy, take good care of yourself, and try everything possible to reduce your symptoms but sometimes, most times actually, the brain is an asshole.
Because in the end, I can’t change what happened to me. I can’t write it away or color it away or distract away from the fact that I had a shitty childhood and adolescence. I practice acceptance but the inside piece of me that is little is just so hurt and so scared and needs so much care and she won’t let this go. She will be heard. She doesn’t want to forget that this happened and howls with the thought that this pain will be forgotten, tucked away in a corner somewhere.
I honor that piece, or at least I’m starting too because she went through some bad shit. At the same time, I could really use some sleep. My therapist tells me this is a way for survivors to stay hypervigilant or hyper-alert. When I start to relax my brain says, Hell no!, and triggers me so I stay alert to any danger. When I wake up now, I am supposed to tell myself that I don’t need this protection and that we are safe. She says if I can improve 2% week to week, she will be pleased and this will progress. She may be pleased but I’m not, I want this to go faster. If I’m honest with myself, really and truly, underneath it all, I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel like my guard should be down and this was a revelation to me because I hadn’t thought about it that way before but it’s true. The world seems like a dark and dangerous place for me and I have to be ready.
What does that mean? It means the foundation work has not been done. I need to go way back, back to basics, and work on feeling safe because for a survivor if there’s no sense of safety, there is no progress. I guess I skipped that part. This I know about myself, I want a shortcut, I want to get better yesterday and I hate that healing isn’t a straight line and almost never continues forward. There are regressions and side trails to this journey that can never be prepped for. It’s maddeningly frustrating for me as a control freak. But I need to work on that too.
I write this because a lot of people take sleep for granted. Only those who had experienced insomnia either the short term or long term will understand the fear and anxiety that comes when you watch the clock keep going forward and realize your window for sleep is almost gone and there won’t be any chance for rest for a long time. There’s also that tiny voice that nags at you, quietly, that maybe sleep will never come again. My very first therapist said lack of sleep never killed anyone and this is one of the reasons she is not my therapist anymore. Because a lack of sleep can kill people, but the reason is listed as heart attack or alcoholism or suicide. It’s an insidious thing that doesn’t get enough attention.
So, if you can’t sleep and like me feel hopelessly locked in this vicious cycle, talk to someone, get some help, reach out. Just like me, even in the midst of the dark, the hopelessness, the nothingness of insomnia there is always room for progress.
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I have been writing for most of my life but only in the past few years have I used it as part of my healing process. I try to use my experiences and struggles to heal from Complex PTSD to help others. Helping other people feel less isolated, being able to provide some education and comfort are very important to me. I love reading poetry, watching my kids grow, and playing with my cats. I work in the mental health field and find that work to be very rewarding. My favorite quote is by Emily Dickinson “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.” For me, hope is the foundation of growth and I’ll do my best to provide that with the words I share.
Sarah, thank you so much for sharing your ordeals with insomnia.
I was dealing with the same fears over going to sleep from age 13 to just a few years ago, I’m 63 now. Hypervigilant little Micah Lyn just would not let her guard down.
I never had any real specialized professional sleep help. My PCPs that would prescribe sleep aids that would just make me freak out. I just stumbled into getting sleep, age maybe? What a crappy solution that is.
I hope you find a way to slumber peacefully, I’m sending good thoughts your way, Micah Lyn.
I am not sleeping because I have a real life stalker 🙁 Not sleeping is keeping me safe.
I have chronic insomnia. Sometimes I will go 3 days with little or no sleep. I cannot begin to tell you how disruptive this is to my life. I have little memory before 8 years of age. I become uncomfortable thinking about even considering remembering a childhood event.
My brother told me, some time ago, that he was never bullied in High School because I was believed the toughest kid in school. More like, most distant, and least willing to speak with you. The tough guy however was terrified of being in bed at home in the dark. It made me so angry, but it was an unspeakable fear, I had no tools to fight with, well… no good tools. My mom told me at one point, that our family broke up because she felt my father was going to kill me. I didn’t even wonder why, or ask. I think as a kid, I would hold on to the previous day as long as I could, because when the sun rose, I could go to sleep. I wish I could now.
Thank you for this. I have been working with multiple doctors and a therapist for more than a year to address similar sleep problems. I have horrifically real, nightly, nightmares. Sometimes I am lucid in them but not enough to control it. Like you, I have tried all of the things. Even going to the maximum dose of prazosin (commonly used to treat ptsd nightmares in war veterans) to no relief. Some of these efforts have made sleep worse, and that dread becomes heavier with each method that fails you. I’m sorry you struggle with this. It is not easy.
I am so jealous of folks who doze off so easily, who don’t know night terrors, waking up soaked through your clothes and mattress in sweat, talking and yelling loudly enough to wake your partner. My doctors give me hope where I lose it. Right now I’m working on training my brain for lucid dreaming, addressing each phase of sleep and trying to find the cues that remind me it is a malleable dream. Don’t give up hope that something will give you some relief.
It is comforting to find people who struggle similarly. Even to my doctors the severity is unknown to them in the way it is to us. The tiredness is insidious, and it has certainly contributed to serious difficulties in the past.
Thank you for sharing your story. I do believe our dreams are telling us things from our unconscious and I can only hope to make subconscious self feel heard and find peace.
Be well
S
Thank you! You are also not alone. I’m crying while typing this because thinking about my “little girl” inside me hurts so bad. My little girl is just so little too, just so hurt too, and just as protected by my external “normal” self.
I’m currently working on the “feeling safe” concept with my therapist using EMDR and desensitization. But the whole process always seems to leave me raw and the path forward takes weird trips and turns. No matter how much progress I make, it never seems like I’m moving forward. It’s a messed up trick the mind plays on us with C-PTSD.
Like the previous commenter, I also kinda stumbled into sleep from 20+ years of sleeping issues. (I slept-walked, had intermit insomnia & hypersomnia, and had a long battle with bed wetting)
Therapy, the right doctors, the right medication (especially Amitriptyline), and simply age is the only reason that at 42 years old I can sleep for 6 hours straight. I wish everyone who reads this knows, your not alone.
This is so me. Thank you for this great article.
I started having insomnia most nights at age 11. I thought it was normal to not sleep well. I used to have to be careful about having my arms over the edge of the bed because some unnamed figment would get me.
This went on for decades. I thought either everyone went through insomnia or I was some kind of freak and shouldn’t talk about any of it.
Dogs helped a lot. I had a 120 lb Shepard Akita mix, a sweetheart of a dog named Teddy Bear, who loved me as much as I loved him. I still had sleeping problems, but if anything tried coming out from under the bed, well, Teddy was a very loyal dog and did it mention he loves me
As an adult, around age 55 or so, I learned about sleep hygiene. Basically, associate the bedroom with nothing but sleep and sex. Cool with me!
That helped a lot. Insomnia kicks in, read a boring book or watch a boring documentary that I had no interest in and, most importantly, do not blame yourself for not sleeping. Be mellow. You will sleep. Just be patient and let whatever thoughts are keeping you up simmer down. Or meditate, work through it with silence.
Or, weirdly enough, cool your body off. I lie naked in front of a fan until the coolness goes barely into discomfort. And that works.
So my journey to getting a good night sleep is a complete jumble. It might prove useless in giving you any relief. But that’s ok. Somewhere out there, or maybe within yourself, is the solution. Something will work.
Sleep in peace, Micah Lyn.
Sat reading this at early hours of the morning, yet another night of no sleep! I find it very difficult to sleep until the sun comes up and the rest of the house is awake. This has been going on years, improved for short periods of time but always reverts back. Thank you for sharing.
I found your comment about your little girl very interesting. I was wondering if you are speaking metaphorically or if you are a experiencing a real younger self in some way.
My adopted son has CPTSD, and he has a form of dissociative disorder which I have come to believe is more common than most professionals think. Unlike real DID, there is a main personality with a number of younger selves. While they can take over the body , or parts of it, for very short periods, the main person doesn’t lose time.
And they are very, very good at keeping him up at night.
If you are experiencing something like this , I would be very interested in talking to you about it.
Mary O’Sullivan
I am experiencing severe insomnia during and now as just finishing divorce from 28 year emotionally abusive marriage and have childhood history of same. The insomnia got worse after a surgery and felt betrayed by my psychiatrist who Said I should not have anti anxiety, even though She prescribed them PRN for past year and I was responsible with no I’ll effects. I am not allowed to take trazadone because of risk of very rare seratonin syndrome reaction. She gave me gabapentin and a prescribed antihistamine , neither help me sleep. I’ve never had this severe of insomnia and barely get a couple hours sleep. I turned to my long term internist and he dies not want to override psychiatrist’s authority despite a truly flawed rationale. I am doing all the things you listed too! Weighted blanket, yoga, hot baths, journaling, trying to exercise although hard with little sleep. I feel like my sleeplessness is a risk to my health and mental health, impacting my ability to even focus and memory! I have appointment with new psychiatrist in a few weeks and plan to schedule with new internist. Providers who don’t listen to patients, have power and authority to make faulty assessments are a threat to the well being of unsuspecting patients who need help. I don’t think any psychotherapy or activity will free me from this hell that is going on over a month. I think an anti anxiety shirt term has potential for a body and brain reset. Chronic severe insomnia should be considered an emergency. In that vein, perhaps I’ll go to ER
Omg this is me! It permeates every minute of every hour of every day in some way. It got so bad for me one year that I couldn’t even go inside the house without fearing the evening and getting into bed. The bedroom was terrifying so I had to sleep on the sofa. And after a series of nights with no sleep, the panic attacks would set in in the early hours of the morning. It was just the most horrific thing and nobody understands who hasn’t been through it. I never found the answer, but there was a point one year where I realised that if I could accept not sleeping and completely stop trying (and I mean fully, bodily except not sleeping) then I would feel better. Half of the battle is the worrying, the fear that you’re not safe, especially with yourself. The lack of trust in your mind to be safe from those nighttime monsters that are part of every child nightmare. The part of you that grieves the safety and security the other people have and you don’t. The part of you that is paralysed by the torture of your own inner turmoil and just wants to turn the whole damn thing off! And yet your mind just keeps speeding up, going faster and faster, going over and over the same thoughts, the same feelings, the same wretched emotions that just! Won’t! Stop! And yet when you find that acceptance, it is pure bliss. It’s hard for me to replicate and I’m still working on it, I think it’s going to be a life’s work, but it did happen and I’m clinging to that. It happened once so it can happen again. I hope it happens for you.
Oh my God girl .. this is ME for past 12 years .. the COLD which does trigger me. My DREAD of the winter .. I stay in Scotland where it’s never very warm. The sore shoulders and jaw. You just made EVERYTHING make sense .. thank you for that 💖